


Castle Keep

by JeanGraham



Category: Forever Knight
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-26
Updated: 2019-08-26
Packaged: 2020-10-01 20:33:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,073
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20396893
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JeanGraham/pseuds/JeanGraham
Summary: The vengeful mistress of Llewellyn Castle captures and imprisons Nicholas.





	Castle Keep

See all of my fanfic and links to my pro fiction at <http://jeangraham.20m.com.>

Castle Keep

by Jean Graham

Four days.

Four *nights,* to be exact, and seven hours and twenty-odd minutes  
since he'd last fed, and the beast wouldn't -- couldn't -- be  
contained much longer.

Nat was late.

Nick paced the kitchen floor, ran a nervous hand through unruly  
blond hair. He'd have to get it cut tomorrow. Just hadn't had the  
time, with the caseload he and Schanke had been working, and Nat  
should have been here by now, she went off shift at four, and why  
hadn't--

"No!"

He slammed a fist on the table, raging at the hunger, at the  
beast that clawed for release, clamored to be fed. He would not  
give in to it; would not even look at the refrigerator. He would  
*not.*

He sank into one of the kitchen chairs, gripping the table's  
edge so fiercely he thought the wood might splinter, and willed the hunger to subside.

It paid no heed to the demand.

If Nat took much longer, the struggle would inevitably be lost  
and the test results ruined anyway. If she hadn't insisted that  
he--

A car door slammed on the street below. Shoes scraped on  
asphalt. Nick put his head down on the table and waited, counting  
the seconds it should take her to enter the alarm code, pull open  
the door... The elevator clattered and groaned, cables  
hauling the aging mechanism upward until finally -- *finally* --  
Natalie bustled through the door, already in full chatter.

"...late but I had a last minute call and still had to get my  
equipment together  
before I--"

When he lifted his head to look at her, she stopped mid-word  
and mid-stride. He knew why: he could feel the fangs straining to  
descend, knew that his eyes were already glowing.

Nat merely waited, said nothing while he turned away, and by  
sheer force of will fought the vampire back into submission. When  
he looked up again, his eyes were blue and Nat was depositing her  
black medical satchel on the table beside him. Test tubes, rubber  
stoppers, sterile needles and hypodermics preceded a host of other  
more arcane paraphernalia onto the tabletop. He could swear her  
hands trembled, but perhaps he'd imagined that.

"I thought you weren't coming," he rasped.

"Oh ye of little faith," she recited with mock seriousness,  
and headed for the sink to scrub down. "This is the last blood  
sample I'll need for now, but you never know, it just might be the  
one that makes all the difference."

He watched as she moved back to the table, snapped the wrapper  
off a needle and began prepping one of the hypos. "Why?" he  
wondered out loud. "Why should this be any different from the  
others? I mean, Nat..." He quelled her protest with a look.  
"Nat, if coming back across were as easy as starving..."

"I know." She grasped his right arm, expert hands unbuttoning  
and rolling back the sleeve, tying the length of orange rubber  
tubing just above his elbow. "But the longer you fast, the weaker  
the vampiric nucleotides in your DNA become. Which means..." He  
felt the needle slide in and begin to draw as she continued,  
"...that a serum would have a better chance of overwhelming the  
vampire element when it's in this more vulnerable state. I can't  
be sure, of course, until I have a chance to..."

Her voice faded to his ears, swallowed by the throbbing of a  
human heartbeat, the roar of blood rushing through veins, arteries.  
She was standing so close. *Too* close. He turned his head away.  
Let her think him a coward, too 'squeamish' to watch the needle  
drawing blood. Anything but the truth. God, she was so close, her  
heartbeat strong and steady and near to drowning him with its  
rhythm. So easy just to reach out and take her, here, now, to  
satisfy the hunger in the way it *should* be satisfied. So very  
easy...

"...should do it," he heard her say, and the needle slipped  
from his arm. Before she could remove the tubing, he leapt to his  
feet, scarcely conscious of the chair overturning, and fled to the  
window. Fists pressed to the uncaring glass, he fought to once  
more bring the beast under control. But it refused to heel.

Toronto's chill winter skyline mocked him, the first pale  
blush of dawn just beginning to stain the horizon. Something  
clattered behind him. The chair scraped the floor. Then Natalie's  
heartbeat returned. Two hands took hold of his arms, turned him,  
thrust something cold and smooth into his grasp.

"Come on," Nat's voice urged. "Test fasting phase concluded.  
Drink."

Oh, yes. The beast would like nothing more than to drink, but  
not from this accursed bottle. One hand kept its grip on the  
container, but the other flashed out to close around Natalie's  
throat, to take what the vampire truly desired...

"Nick... Don't!"

She trembled when his fingers tightened, and her fear was as  
intoxicating as the smell of her blood.

*"Nick!!"*

Her fingers pried in vain at his hand. Warm fingers, full of  
life, full of blood...

"Nick, please!" The voice became suddenly smaller, pleading,  
childlike.

He didn't want to hurt her. There were reasons, if only he  
could remember them. But he didn't want to let her go, either.  
The beast needed -- demanded -- to be fed. He turned her head  
aside, baring the vein at her throat, opened his mouth to  
strike...

With the searing agony of flame, sunlight broke over the  
horizon and streamed through the unshuttered window. Nick cried  
out, pivoted away from the light, fell into the shadowed safety of  
the fireplace hearth. Nat momentarily forgotten, he discovered  
that the bottle had come with him, and proceeded to drain it to its  
last, thoroughly unsatisfying drop. When it had clattered to the  
bricks and rolled away, he found another had been placed nearby,  
and that he drained as well. Most of a third followed that before  
the beast subsided, subdued if not entirely satisfied by the taste  
of cow's blood.

He glanced up to see Nat leaning, arms crossed, against the  
table, her eyes hard. "Finished?" she asked in a voice more  
brittle than icicles.

Her tone rankled, and his own voice responded, deep and  
threatening. "I did warn you not to get too close."

"Right." She turned away, began re-packing the bag with items  
from the table. The lights were on, he noted, the electronic shades  
drawn. Nat had mastered the intricacies of his remote control, if  
not those of its owner.

She jumped when he appeared without warning beside her. The  
hand on her shoulder, meant to be reassuring, felt her go tense and  
stiff instead. "Nat, I'm sorry," he said. "I didn't mean..."

"Sure," she said, her hand at her throat, still trembling.  
"Like you said, you did warn me, right from the start."

She pulled out of his grasp, zipping the bag and preparing to  
go. He reached out to her again, wishing he could keep her here,  
assure her that she was safe now. But it would have been a lie. He  
let the hand drop. No mortal woman had been safe in his proximity  
in nearly 800 years. Exceptional though she may be, Nat was no  
exception to the rule.

"I'm sorry," he said again, but the words rang hollow, as lame  
and useless as the pretender-to-humanity who had spoken them. She  
wouldn't come again, not after this, and how could he blame her?

*They will all leave you, in time,* Lacroix's voice taunted  
from somewhere long ago. *Mortals, mon Nicholas, cannot be  
trusted...*

He spun, stalked back to the fireplace and hung onto the  
mantel as though it were a lifeline. The ornately carved dragon  
there glared back at him. "I should never have agreed to this," he  
said morosely. "I should have known better."

He could feel her eyes on him, studying him. "Four days can't  
be the longest you've ever abstained?"

A question not from the woman, but from the scientist, asked  
from a carefully maintained safe distance with the table now  
between them. He wanted to laugh at the naivete of it. "No." In  
point of fact, four days *was* the longest he'd ever been deprived  
\-- willingly. There had been a time...

"No," he said again curtly.

Her voice remained detached, insatiably curious. "Well if a  
vampire can't really die of starvation, and if blood deprivation  
doesn't bring him back across, what *does* happen if you don't...  
if you don't..."

"Feed," he supplied, still not looking at her. "The word is  
'feed.' And what happens is something you'd rather not see."

He heard the satchel lift, rattling, from the table. Then  
she'd come up behind him, too close again, her heartbeat pounding  
a temptation in his ears. He closed his eyes and told himself that  
the hunger had been satisfied. But he and the beast both knew that  
for a lie.

"What *does* happen?" she asked, still the doctor, still the  
scientist.

Nick's fingers flexed twice over the dragon's pointed snout.  
"You'd better go," he grated. "Now."

"Nick..."

"Please, just go." He hadn't meant the words to sound so  
harsh. Probably was for the best, though. She backed away, and he  
heard the elevator door slide open.

"I'll call you when I've run the tests," she said.

He nodded, never turning around as the lift closed and the car  
wheezed its way to the lower floor.

"Believe me," he said aloud to the now-absent Natalie. "You  
wouldn't want to see..."

< + >

He'd been hungry on that night as well, weakened by three days  
in hiding, striving in vain to elude Lady Justine's huntsmen. Four  
brief nights ago he had feigned dining at her table, the handsome  
gentleman courting the noblewoman's daughter. Now he was quarry  
for her hounds, nothing more than the monstrous creature that had  
murdered Jocelyn, and who, should they catch him, would pay for  
that offense with his life.

With his semblance of life.

The hounds began baying the instant the hunger drove him from  
his lair and out into the night. They were closer than he'd hoped.  
He'd have no time to find prey. So foolish, to be trapped so  
easily! It had been too near dawn to fly when he had gone into  
hiding: now he was too weak for flight, and would have to take his  
chances on the ground.

*Do you really think you're capable of living among them?*  
Lacroix's warning rang in his ears as the forest trees flashed past  
him. Though their bitter argument was but two months gone, his  
master's words had all come horribly true. *Did your holy wars  
teach you nothing?* he had sneered. *The human race is treachery  
personified. Sooner or later, they will always betray you, turn on  
you. That is the nature of _their_ beast.*

Nicholas could not run short of breath, but his strength was  
flagging nonetheless, slowing his pace. The hounds were gaining.

They ran him to ground against a steep cliffside covered with  
deadfall. Eight dogs surrounded him, barking, snapping and  
slathering. He tried futilely to swat them away. They drove him  
to the leaf-matted ground instead and held him there, howling  
in triumph as their masters came crashing through the trees,  
lanterns held high and shouting to the others that the 'beast' had  
at last been cornered.

"Where?" a voice demanded, and three pairs of booted feet  
crunched across the woodfall toward him. He recognized Justine's  
chief gamemaster, Adric, a fiery-haired bear of a man with a  
disposition to match. At his sharp gesture, the dogs left their  
conquest and heeled, leaving Nicholas, spreadeagled, alone on the  
ground. Adric moved into the nimbus of light created by his  
companions' lamps. Something in his hands glinted, fire on metal  
and wood. The crossbow, already drawn and locked, came to bear on  
Nicholas' chest.

Adric's thick finger closed over the weapon's trigger. "On  
your feet," he commanded.

Absurdly shamed at the thought of dying on the ground,  
Nicholas obeyed. He stumbled, fell awkwardly against the hillside  
littered with deadwood, but kept his feet. If he could capture the  
gamemaster's eyes somehow...

Adric merely grimaced at him, and pulled the trigger.

The bolt struck home. Too late, he tried desperately to sweep  
it aside, but his hands were sluggish, not nearly quick enough.  
Nicholas cried out and pitched forward to his knees. The hounds  
bayed and yipped. He heard Adric shout something. At once, stout  
hands grabbed his arms, hauled him up and back until he was pinned  
against the hillside.

"It isn't dead," one of the men complained.

Adric's bearded face loomed closer, studying him with cold,  
appraising eyes. "Yet," he amended with a snort. The huntsman  
reached to grasp the crossbolt, gave it a hard shove and then  
snapped off the shaft. Nicholas' scream set the dogs barking  
again.

"Off your mark a bit, weren't you, Adric?" one of the hunters  
wondered. "Doesn't look through the heart to me."

"It isn't." The burly gamemaster lifted his quarry's hands,  
then crossed and bound them just as though he were trussing a deer  
for the spit. "Don't want it dead just yet."

One of the men hastily made the sign of the cross and bent to  
snatch a sharp branch from the deadfall. "Are you mad? Use this  
then. Finish it!"

The gamemaster patiently completed his knots before accepting  
the proffered branch. "That will be my Lady's privilege," he said,  
and tossed the piece of wood aside. "Go and tell William to bring  
a horse. We'll wait here."

< + >

The soft strains of a Chopin etude woke him. Nick rolled over  
and sat up in bed, knowing without seeing through the shuttered  
windows that the sun had set.

He also, apparently, had company.

The etude continued, unbroken and flawless, as he threw on his  
silk bathrobe and padded barefoot down the stairs. Beneath the  
landing, Janette sat at his grand piano, tapers on either side  
alight, a wine bottle and two crystal goblets waiting beside the  
rightmost candle. Eyes closed, she finished the piece and allowed  
the last echo of the final note to fade away before she spoke.

"Awake at last?"

He moved past her to the refrigerator and retrieved one of his  
own bottles, returning to stand beside her. "And to what do I owe  
the honor...?"

She frowned prettily. "Really, Nicola. Must I wait for an  
engraved invitation?"

"No." Not that she would. Placing his bottle on the piano as  
well, he lifted and uncorked hers, filled one of the wine glasses  
and then repeated the motion with his own 'preferred vintage.' She  
slid aside to make room for him on the bench, accepting the glass  
from him with a smile. Her fingers, as cold as the crystal,  
lingered on his own before their hands parted and he reached for  
the second glass.

"I felt..." She hesitated, took a sip of the blood wine,  
finally finished her sentence. "...that you needed me. Or that  
you needed someone."

"I'm fine." But his rapid draining of the glass belied his  
words. She watched as he refilled it, an earnest look of concern  
in her eyes.

"I felt your hunger," she said quietly.

Nick emptied the second glass and set it down, fighting the  
urge to simply grab and drain the bottle. "An experiment," he said  
truthfully. "Nothing to worry about. Anyway, it's over now."

"I will never understand you." Her blue eyes regarded him  
over the rim of her glass. "Why do you torture yourself so? We  
are not meant to be deprived. We are creatures of--"

He stopped her with a finger pressed to her lips. "I know."  
He slipped the glass from her hand and placed it aside, then kissed  
her, briefly but passionately. The taste of human blood on her lips  
awakened the beast, conjured vivid images of the lovemaking they  
had shared over the centuries. He forced himself to pull away, to  
quell the stirrings.

"You delude yourself, *mon cher,*" she murmured with genuine  
pity in her voice. "You know well enough that starving yourself  
cannot make you mortal again. Remember Justine..."

He rose abruptly, snagging the bottle of cow's blood, and  
stalked away to the kitchen. "I haven't forgotten anything."

Etiquette be damned, he tipped the bottle to his lips and  
drank. If Janette had expected more courtly behavior from him, she  
was going to be disappointed.

"You do still need me, Nicola. And all of us, whether you  
know it or not." She came up behind him, slender hands slipping  
with familiar ease around his waist. Her lips caressed the back of  
his neck. "Now, just as then, you need us."

< + >

He had never wanted to need them. But that very arrogance had  
cost him dearly at Justine's hands. Had he not quarreled with  
Lacroix, left the master and Janette in Paris and insisted on going  
his own way... The result had been, Lacroix would say, a lesson of  
his own making.

Nicholas had suffered the indignity of his transport back to  
the castle in grim silence. He'd been draped over the gelding's  
hindquarters like a prize hart, bleeding, bound hand and foot. For  
all of the three-hour journey, every step the animal took jarred  
the embedded crossbolt and drove agony through the open wound. He  
was very near senseless with the pain by the time the hunting party  
passed through the portcullis into Castle Llewellyn's courtyard,  
and the panting horse was brought to a halt at last.

Lanterns clanked. Voices spoke in hushed whispers. One of  
them, Adric's, growled, "Well, go and wake her then!"

Hands unknotted Nicholas' bindings, dragged him roughly off  
the horse and across the sawdust-covered yard. They entered a  
structure he recognized dimly as the smokehouse. There, his  
captors secured his hands once more above his head, leaving him  
suspended from a meathook against the small building's back wall.  
More voices. The shuffling of many feet. The puissant smell of  
burning lantern oil mingled with the odor of curing venison...

Some time later, a new commotion approached the door.  
Nicholas recognized Adric's voice, and then another he had last  
heard three days before.

A gasp preceded Lady Justine's sickened exclamation. "Mother  
of God, Adric. Surely no man could lose so much blood and live!"

"True enough," Adric answered her. "But this is not a man."

Nicholas heard the distinctive sound of a sword being drawn.  
A moment later, the blade tip came to rest against his cheek,  
tapped him once, twice, then a third time hard enough to draw  
blood. With an effort, he lifted his head. Red eyes and beast's  
fangs bared, he snarled at his tormentor. Adric retreated with a  
startled oath.

Lady Justine crossed herself, drew the brocade edges of her  
dressing gown tighter around her shoulders. "What demon out of  
hell is this? Not the man who sat table with me three evenings  
past!"

"Not a man at all," her gamemaster repeated. "A vampire. A  
creature feigning humanity long enough to feed on the innocent --  
as this one fed on Mistress Jocelyn."

Justine's crown of greying raven hair reflected firelight from  
the lanterns as she took a step toward her daughter's killer.  
Adric put out an arm to block her path. "No, my lady. Do not  
stand too near."

Her face had grown stern as well as angry. "The vampire lives  
forever, so legend has it. If it cannot die, how will it pay for  
murdering my daughter?" She went closer in spite of Adric's  
restraint and spat her next words in Nicholas' face. "How will you  
pay, demon?"

The gamemaster drew her back then, gesturing with the sword as  
he spoke. "No, lady, not quite forever. They may die by four  
means only. By burning..." His eyes strayed to the lantern  
suspended from a ceiling beam nearby. "By taking off the  
head..." He ran a finger down the sword's broad side. "By a  
wooden stake driven through the heart..." He smiled, showing  
yellowed teeth, then pointed with the sword to the tiny room's  
thatched ceiling. "And by exposure. Remove the thatching, wait  
three hours hence, and the sunrise will do our work for us."  
Nicholas met Lady Justine's iron gaze with eyes that were blue  
once more, as well as unashamedly fearful. To die writhing in the  
sunlight... Any one of Adric's other methods would have been more  
merciful.

But then, Llewellyn's mistress had no reason to show him any  
semblance of mercy. Without warning, she wrested the sword from a  
surprised Adric's hand and promptly brought its edge to bear  
against Nicholas' throat. "Tell me why I should not take your head  
here and now, vampire! For my Jocelyn..." Tears choked her words,  
twisted them into a sob. The blade fell, thudded to the  
blood-soaked earth beneath him. Justine sank to her knees,  
clutched fists full of the muddy gore, and wailed her daughter's  
name to the heavens.

Adric and two others rushed to her side. They pulled her  
upright and then quickly re-established their proper distance,  
waiting for her to regain her composure. When she had done so, the  
lady of the manor drew herself up and fixed Nicholas with a glare  
of unmitigated hatred. But it was the huntsmen to whom she spoke.

"Remove the thatching," she said, and swept from the room.

< + >

Janette sensed his anguish at the memory almost as sharply as  
she had done on that night in Paris, so long ago. Curled  
comfortably against him on the leather couch, her head against his  
shoulder, she confessed, "I felt your pain then. As did he." She  
knew that, in fact, Lacroix had felt it far more keenly than she.

Bitterness laced his reply. "But not enough to help me," he  
said. It was an unaccusing statement of cold fact.

"I wanted to. Lacroix would not..." She lifted her head to  
look into his eyes. "In nearly eighty years, it was the first time  
you had rejected him. He was so angry. So..." There was no other  
word for it. "So hurt."

The denial flashed in his eyes long before he voiced it.  
"Nothing ever 'hurt' Lacroix."

"You did. Perhaps if you had not argued so horribly. If you  
had not hated him so much..."

Nicola merely stared at her, stubbornly having none of it.  
But she knew, as he could not, how the master had suffered his  
fledgling's pain. She remembered it only too well.

< + >

"How can you simply stand there?!" She had all but screamed  
the words at him. Her master was a dark statue silhouetted against  
the Paris night. She had followed him out onto the ornate balcony  
of their estate, and watched as his shoulders shook with the  
intensity of Nicola's far away agony. Even over the leagues  
between Paris and Cardiff, their link remained strong. So strong  
that she feared Lacroix would go mad with the pain.

"You can stop it," she pleaded. *"We* can stop it."

He spoke one syllable through clenched teeth, his pale hands  
clutching the balustrade so tightly the masonry might crack at any  
moment. "No."

*Merde! Why must men always be so stubborn?!*

"Then he will die," she said aloud through her tears. "Nicola  
will die. And then, when your heart is torn out, will you be  
satisfied? *Will* you?"

"We are *not* going!!" He turned on her then, all the fury of  
the ages burning in his eyes. Janette flinched, but refused to  
retreat. In all their years together, he had never raised a hand  
to do her harm. If only the same could have been said of Nicola...

"Why?" The question came out a broken sob: she didn't care.  
Lacroix would tolerate the weakness of her tears far more readily  
than he had ever forgiven Nicola his. *"Why?* If you love him as  
you say..."

The ancient vampire drew in a long breath, rage dispelling  
into tightly controlled anger. "Nicholas must learn," he seethed,  
"that there are 'masters' far harsher than his own."

And with that he had gone. Cold air rushed over her and then  
departed in the wake of his flight, leaving her alone with her  
tears.

< + >

Sunrise

The instrument of Nicholas' death loomed, mere minutes away  
now. He could no longer lift his head to see the open roof. No  
matter. His senses told him dawn was near, that the eastern sky  
was already beginning to brighten. He wondered how long it took to  
die in the sun...

"Cut him down."

Lady Justine's voice came out of nowhere. He'd heard no one  
approach. Hands touched, lifted him, severed his bonds and carried  
him from the room. Where? They hadn't traveled far when he heard  
the heavy scrape of a metal door. Then he was abruptly dropped  
onto a stone-paved floor and left there, face down in an awkward  
heap. He could open his eyes just enough to see high rounded stone  
walls illuminated by flickering torchlight. Llewellyn's keep, by  
the look of it. No windows, no doors save the ironclad entry, and  
no way for the sunlight to enter the roof. Perhaps the Lady  
Justine had chosen some other means to carry out his execution?

"I still say the risk is too great," Adric's bass voice  
rumbled from somewhere out of view. "This is not a creature you  
may cage like some--"

"Do as you're told, Adric." Justine's tone brooked no  
argument. "Chain him, if it pleases you. But revive him. I would  
tell him to his face what his punishment shall be."

Adric's mud-spattered boots moved into Nicholas' field of  
vision. One of them came to rest beneath his shoulder and kicked,  
rolling him onto his back. With an oath, the big man crouched  
beside him. One leather-gloved hand grasped and rent the bloodied  
fabric of his tunic; the other brandished a pair of blacksmith's  
forceps. Nicholas wondered hazily what they were for, until the  
cold iron was pressed into his wound to clamp the broken shaft of  
the crossbolt.

He had no strength to scream. When the fire of the bolt  
pulling free tore through him, he let out a small choking gasp and  
managed somehow to roll away, curling himself against the chill  
comfort of the curving wall.

Adric's final affront was to clamp a leg-iron to his ankle,  
the chain presumably linked to a bolt somewhere in the same wall.  
After a time, a servant dispatched from the slaughterhouse brought  
a wooden keg filled with hog's blood, placed it near him on the  
floor, and fled.

He was able to sit up by the time Lady Justine returned. The  
empty keg lay on its side in the center of the barren floor. She  
came alone, smiling her triumph when the shaft of sunlight beaming  
in the door, though it did not touch him, made him wince and turn  
aside. The door scraped shut, leaving her in the dimmer light of  
the dying torches, and he turned back again, allowing his eyes to  
glow.

"What do you want with me?" They were the first words he had  
spoken in three days, and they came from the vampire, a deep and  
threatening growl.

It pleased him that she took a startled step backward,  
surprised that her prisoner, so helpless mere hours before, could  
make such demands of her now. She recovered herself, returned  
threat for threat. "Is this the gratitude I'm given for sparing  
your miserable life?"

"I have not heard the price as yet." He tried to hold her  
gaze, but she looked away, pacing to and fro with nervous hands  
running over the elaborate gown she now wore. She was careful, he  
noted, to remain across the room and near the door. Probably wise,  
though she could not have known that he'd not yet fed enough to  
break Adric's chains.

"I hold these lands by marriage," she said, and turned her  
head to look at him again. "My husband is recently dead, and  
because I am foreign to this place, there are those who would  
overrun my holdings, take them from me. I am in need of a way for  
my enemies to... disappear."

Nicholas sank back against the wall, the gold in his eyes  
fading quickly to blue. "I am not an animal performing for its  
keep," he spat. "I will not kill for you."

Lady Justine's tone was as hard as her eyes. "Yes. You will.  
Do not imagine that you will be given any choice. For my Jocelyn's  
murder you deserve death. To save my lands, I sentence you instead  
to live." She lifted her gaze toward the keep's high ceiling.  
"Here."

She turned her back on his look of horrified realization,  
rapping twice on the door. A dour-faced Adric entered, again  
casting a bright light beam eastward across the floor. The  
gamekeeper escorted his lady out before returning with a small  
woven cloth in hand. Casting Nicholas a wary glance, he unfolded  
the bundle to reveal a wooden crucifix wound about with a pungent  
string of garlic. Both of these he hung with shaking hands on the  
inner side of the door, all the while mumbling a prayer. Then he  
crossed himself and hurried out again. The door thudded shut, its  
iron bolt dropping into place on the other side with an echoing  
clang. With the draft of its closing, the last burning torch  
guttered, hissed and went out.

< + >

"She locked you in that place..." Janette shivered and rose  
from the couch to go nearer to Nicola's fire, wishing for the first  
time in ten centuries that it could warm her. "Did you...?"

She left the question unfinished, not at all sure how he would  
react. He said nothing for a time. Then, at his touch of a  
control, the heavy shutters on her right hummed open on the  
panorama of Toronto's newly fallen night. In another moment, he  
had joined her at the window.

"The Lady Justine's enemies disappeared, one by one," he said  
hoarsely. "The 'creature' in Llewellyn's keep killed all of them,  
to keep from starving. There were many of them in the beginning.  
Then they brought fewer, and fewer..." He took a deep breath,  
released it in a shuddering sigh. "After a time, no one came  
anymore."

Janette stared out at the night, at the near-full moon rising  
over the spire of the CN Tower. "Lacroix received word in London  
that Justine had died, and that she had left instructions that the  
keep be sealed. He knew you were not dead, but I swear, Nicola,  
he never expected to find..." Again, she met the pain in his eyes  
and could not finish.

"Do you know what hell is, Janette? Hell is being trapped in  
an immortal body with nowhere to go, no way to feed, nothing but  
days turning to months turning to years while you lie in a tomb,  
not even granted the mercy of unconsciousness. And all the while,  
with every single passing moment, you are completely,  
excruciatingly aware."

Janette shivered. She had wished, on that night, not to be  
aware. The horror of Castle Llewellyn's keep was one memory she  
would gladly have given away...

< + >

Wind howled through Llewellyn's splintered portcullis and  
across her broken battlements. Janette landed with Lacroix in the  
litter-strewn courtyard, turned to gaze up at the lightless  
windows. "But Lacroix," she breathed, "how can he be here? It is  
abandoned."

Her master turned a slow circle until his eyes came to rest on  
the circular tower at the courtyard's center. "He is here," he  
whispered.

Janette followed him to the stone structure, one of the few in  
the castle complex with its walls and roof intact. It looked, in  
fact, as though someone had taken great care to patch the crumbling  
stone walls with lime and mortar. The recessed doorway, however,  
had been filled with enormous granite blocks. Lacroix tossed them  
aside as though they were made of parchment and then snapped the  
rusting iron lock that held the bar. He broke that as well,  
tearing it from the door as he wrenched the thing clear of its  
hinges and sent it crashing into the pile of discarded stones. He  
started inside, but pulled up so abruptly that Janette ran into  
him.

"Wait for me outside," he said.

She stared past him into the close, dark place, took a single  
breath and immediately gagged. She needed no other prompting to  
flee back out into the night air, where she fell against the  
granite stones and continued retching for several terrible minutes.  
In her 300 years of unlife, she had seen death in nearly all its  
forms, but this... The keep had been made a sepulcher, and yet the  
dead had not been lovingly laid to rest there. Though the corpses  
she had glimpsed were long turned to grave wax, both the horror and  
stench of their deaths still lingered.

Some small sound made her look up to see Lacroix emerging from  
the keep. Why in sanity's name was he carrying one of the corpses?  
He came toward her, cradling the ashen grey thing in his arms like  
one might hold a child. And its face...

Janette thrust a hand into her mouth to hold back a scream.  
"No... Oh, no..."  
Lacroix paid her hysterics no heed, but carried his burden out  
into the courtyard, where he began surveying the empty, high-arched  
windows of the castle proper. He chose a chamber with an intact  
roof and flying to it, bore the 'corpse' inside. He reappeared a  
moment later, and from the open window arch, commanded her, "Watch  
over him. Find clothing and cleanse him. But do *not* feed him.  
*I* will see to that."

He took flight then, vanishing into the night. Drawing in  
great draughts of chilled air, Janette steeled herself to enter the  
chamber...

< + >

Nick placed an empty green bottle in the sink, then crossed  
his kitchen to retrieve a full one from the refrigerator. He used  
a glass this time, and filled another from Janette's bottle on the  
piano. Both of these he placed on the mantel, under the rampant  
dragon's wing.

She remained beside the window, still lost, he was sure, in  
grim memories of Castle Llewellyn. Her tears had left red-tinted  
droplets on her perfect cheeks. Nick leaned forward and began to  
kiss them away.

"I am sorry, Nicola. If I could have found a way to go to you  
alone--"

"I know." He kissed her again, lingering long on her lips,  
trailing down to her chin and then the lush, white softness of her  
throat. It took a herculean effort to pull himself away, and he  
felt her deep disappointment at the parting. He took refuge  
instead in the wine glasses, handing hers across with a small,  
awkward smile. Her fingers idly traced the glass rim, the shade of  
her painted nails matching that of the contents.

"I have never understood why you want this thing, this...  
humanity... so much. Nor did Lacroix."

"Is it so terrible a thing, to be human?"

She dipped one long fingernail into the blood wine and stirred  
it absently. "It was for me."

Nick watched her toy with her drink, then quickly downed his  
own. "Well not to me," he said. In truth, his own brief mortal  
life had had little to speak for it. But the mortality he now  
sought to gain would be very, very different. He would see to  
that.

As though conjuring forth some lurking spirit, Janette stopped  
stirring and gazed into the swirling liquid in her glass. "He did  
love you, you know," she said softly. "In spite of everything..."

Nick turned away. The still-fresh scorch marks blackening the  
elevator door stared accusingly back at him, demanding guilt that  
he adamantly refused to feel. "You have a twisted definition of  
love," he said bleakly. "So did he."

The telephone warbled. Nick stood still, listened as his own  
voice apologized for being asleep or incommunicado, and encouraged  
the caller to leave a message. Natalie's uncharacteristically  
hesitant voice echoed from the answering machine. "Nick? Look, I  
know it's your night off and you might be out, but I had to... I  
wanted... Damn. I don't know any other way to say this. You were  
right about it being dangerous, getting too close. Maybe you were  
also right about this whole thing being a mistake. I dunno. I  
uh... won't be coming by the loft anymore. Safer that way. We  
can say what we need to at the 'office,' I guess. I'll... talk to  
you later."

The machine clicked off, and another faraway echo teased at  
the back of Nick's mind. *Only _we_ are eternal, Nicholas. One  
way or another, a mortal will always leave you.*

Janette appeared in front of him, pressing her empty wine  
glass into his free hand. "My cue to go, I think." But she paused  
to caress his cheek with the back of one slender white hand. "One  
last word of advice, *mon cher,* is all that I may give you." She  
leaned forward to kiss him lightly on the lips, then whispered into  
his ear. "Learn to be happy as you are."

She was gone before he could respond, a rush of displaced air  
the only sign of her passing. Setting the crystal goblets on the  
table, Nick stalked back to the refrigerator for another bottle.  
He closed his eyes, and for a long, comforting moment, held the  
frosted glass to his forehead.

*Yessss, Nicholas. Do try to be happy as you are!*

The apparition stood at the elevator door -- in precisely the  
place he had last seen Lacroix in 'life.' Then this room had been  
ablaze, and Nick had rushed the master vampire with a flaming stake  
in hand, pinning him, shrieking, to the door.

"Lacroix..."

The thing, glowing an unearthly blue, lifted a hand toward  
him. *How can you turn your back on all that you've been given?*  
it demanded, the hushed voice unmistakably, unforgettably  
Lacroix's. *You cannot deny what you _are._*

"I do not deny it." Cradling the bottle, Nick moved  
unsteadily across the kitchen floor. "But I *will* find a way to  
change it."

The apparition shook its head. *'How sharper than a serpent's  
tooth it is to have a thankless child,'* it intoned. *No,  
Nicholas. You are _my_ creature. You will always _be_ my  
creature.*

"No..."

The loft dissolved around him, became the ruined castle  
chamber at Llewellyn in which he had first heard those words.

< + >

"You are my creature, Nicholas. Now more than ever you were."  
His master swept a cloaked arm toward the limp forms of two hapless  
peasants sprawled on the chamber floor. "Do you think *they* saved  
you from the Lady Justine's charnel house? Their blood sustains  
you. *Mine...*" He pushed the cloak back to reveal his own gashed  
wrist. "...gave you back your life!"

Nicholas sought Janette's eyes, and despite their pleading,  
answered his master with defiance. "I will not be a slave."

The older vampire merely sneered at him. "Really?"

"I will *not* serve you!" Nicholas was appalled to hear his  
voice betray him, breaking with the threat of tears.

Lacroix struck him, a blow that sent him reeling against  
rotting tapestries on the south wall. Janette's cry was stifled by  
an oath from Lacroix. He looked about to strike her as well, but  
he seized her arm instead and pulled her roughly to the window.  
He turned back to his ungrateful fledgling with the red glow of  
vampiric fury in his eyes.

"You *will* follow. Or by my troth, I will seal you in that  
crypt for the *rest* of eternity!" He stepped to the ledge, still  
holding Janette's arm, and then both were gone into the darkness.

Nicholas' clutching fingers shredded the tapestry as he slid  
down the wall. He fell to his knees on the dirty floor, and there  
gave vent to his tears.

< + >

*You shame your own with this pointless quest for mortality,*  
the ghost hissed at him. *You _will_ give it up.*

Nick hurled the full bottle at Lacroix's smirking image.  
Glass shattered. Cow's blood ran in rivulets down the elevator  
door and stained the scorch marks red. The apparition began to  
laugh.

"Never!" Nick screamed the word, falling to his knees and  
pressing both hands to his ears as Lacroix's soft laughter filled  
the room.

Blue light flashed yellow; the ghost ceased to be. A single  
wisp of smoke tendrilled from the scorched and blood-stained door.  
As he had in Castle Llewellyn's ruined chamber so long ago,  
Nicholas Knight huddled alone on the floor, and wept as he had wept  
then.

< + >

Lost in morbid reverie, he'd passed what remained of the night  
at the window. His electronic shutters had only just closed out  
the dawn when he heard the elevator rising.

Natalie walking through the door was a sight he'd never  
expected to see again. The look on her face, however, made him  
wonder if perhaps she'd only come to say good-bye.

"Hello, Nat." The words sounded completely inane, but he  
could think of nothing else to say.

"I stopped by because..." She hesitated, seemed to reach a  
decision, then surprised him by moving quickly to his side.  
"Actually, I uh, came to apologize," she said, and at his startled  
look, she reached out to grasp both his hands. "I'm sorry about  
the phone call. Can we... just forget I said any of that?"

With no idea at all what to say, Nick spoke instead with his  
hand, raising it to trace the line of her cheek. She was so warm,  
so alive. So *mortal.*

"I..." She faltered again, took a deep breath. "I got  
scared. Guess I'm only human after all. But I still think we can  
lick this thing, if you're still willing to work with me."

Was that the scientist speaking again? His hand dropped away.  
"Because you can't resist a scientific challenge?"

"No..." The eyes holding his filled with tears. "No, damn  
it. Because I care about *you.*"  
He wrapped his arms around her and drew her to him, stroking  
her head as she burrowed it against his chest.

"Don't give up on me, Nick. Don't give up on yourself."

He clung to her like the one ray of hope in his world that she  
was. "Never," he murmured. He held her close and kissed the top  
of her head. "Never..."

\+ End +


End file.
